In the live stock industry, heated water buckets are used to keep water from freezing during the winter months and are well known. Heretofore, conventional heated water buckets have used plastic buckets that have an outer heat source either mounted to the bottom of the bucket or wrapped around the sides of the bucket with a second outer bucket or shell covering the heating element. While heated water buckets have used plastic buckets because their plastic construction provides better heat transfer, plastic buckets are more prone to damage and breakage. Plastic buckets are readily broken when kicked or stepped on by a large farm animal. For this reason, rubber water buckets are commonly preferred because they are flexible and will not break when kicked or step on by an animal. While rubber is preferred for durability, rubber buckets have been ill suited for heated application. Simply submerging a heating element in the bottom of a rubber bucket has proven undesirable because, certain livestock such as horses are hesitant to drink from a bucket that contains a foreign object. In addition, simply submerging a heating element within a rubber bucket exposes the heating element's cord to the animal.
The heated water bucket of this invention provides a rubber bucket with an integrated heating unit fitted to the bottom of the bucket. The heating unit covers the entire bottom of the bucket acting as a false “bottom” so that the heating unit does not appear as a foreign object within the bucket. The heating units is held to the bottom of the bucket by a peripheral flange that extends radially around the inside of the bucket sidewall. The rubber construction of the bucket itself makes the invention more durable, but also improves the bucket's thermal insulation properties, making it more efficient than conventional heated plastic buckets.
These and other advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of an embodiment of the invention with reference to the accompanying drawings.